Real solutions require deep, comprehensive understanding of the relevant problems and often involve trade-offs.
Agreed, though we usually don’t need to start with comprehensive understanding to start making things better. There are often institutional/organizational low-hanging-fruit choices that ameliorate particular harms at low or negative cost, which we nevertheless manage to just not do for many years or decades.
Most of these require some form of restraint on development, which has a cost
And most people do not know how to weigh costs against benefits, or to estimate either, or to evaluate the credibility of third party estimates of either. In many contexts, “Y has a cost, but will pay for itself in X years” (where X<10) is somehow not seen as a knockdown argument even in purely economic terms. Adding other positive non-economic effects sometimes, somehow makes Y look like a luxury good, even more out of reach, or somehow a scam.
Agreed, though we usually don’t need to start with comprehensive understanding to start making things better. There are often institutional/organizational low-hanging-fruit choices that ameliorate particular harms at low or negative cost, which we nevertheless manage to just not do for many years or decades.
And most people do not know how to weigh costs against benefits, or to estimate either, or to evaluate the credibility of third party estimates of either. In many contexts, “Y has a cost, but will pay for itself in X years” (where X<10) is somehow not seen as a knockdown argument even in purely economic terms. Adding other positive non-economic effects sometimes, somehow makes Y look like a luxury good, even more out of reach, or somehow a scam.